


We would have a fine time living in the night

by QueenOfBithynia



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Alm/Clair is semi-unrequited, Drunken Introspection, F/M, bittersweet postgame times, the repressed alcoholic and dozens of liters of vodka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfBithynia/pseuds/QueenOfBithynia
Summary: The Emperor of Rigel throws a feast. Activities include drunk dancing and drunk thinking-about-people-you-hate.
Relationships: Alm/Anthiese | Celica, Alm/Clea | Clair
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	We would have a fine time living in the night

**Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio!**

The rule of the Rigelian feast was that when the emperor drank, everyone drank. 

Alm raised his cup, gave a few seconds so everyone could see, and downed the vodka, following with a pickle. The feasters gave a shout here and there and followed suit. Celica drank, though bread was the first item in hand, and she swallowed both before it burned. She didn’t mind the harsh tinge to the drink - quite liked it, in fact. She grabbed another immediately. 

Lima had liked the Rigelian feast. He loved the power. He drank, everyone else drank. Lima loved anything psychoactive or stimulatory or that gave some novel high. Most mornings Celica could remember, he stumbled about groaning, covering his eyes, vomiting. But at the feasts, others fell under the influence long before he did. He’d go about, catching men and women exiting to the privies, and talk with them of the weather and their whereabouts and who they had spoken with the last week, if they were plotting anything, if their daughters would like to come alone with him to his hunting cabin. 

After a few, real, drinks, Lima was a ranting, snarling, cruel mess, and after a few more, a pathetic one. In neither case was he composed enough to manipulate other drunks. It only took Celica a few years to realize he drank water for the first half of the night, before he joined in and caught up with the rest of the court in short order. A few more years, and Celica understood why Lima didn’t die in an ‘accident’ while drunk out of his mind. Desaix didn’t need to order Lima dragged from his bed, stabbed a dozen times, and paraded about the palace and city, if all he wanted was to rid himself of the king. He did it because they cheered when they saw his head riding a pike through the great hall, out into the city streets, and placed on the gates looking over the Godess’ Field.

Celica would have cheered, too. 

When the meal was half done, Alm drank again. He, rose, raised the cup, gave a second so all could see, and downed it. Celica drank, poured herself another cup, and drank again. When Alm sat, she put her hand around his collar, rose up and pulled him in, and kissed him on the lips. Vodka, was the taste. 

  
  


**Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio!**

  
  


Prince Berkut of Rigel had begun dancing as a boy. He wrote poetry, played the harp, was nimble as a cat, a prodigal horseman, could take the wings off a fly with his lance, and had perhaps a mediocre grasp on battlefield tactics. Alm was pretty good at fixing things, drew some impressive caricatures with a stick in the dirt, and was the only one of his friends who could read. 

_‘The gods, of course, could only pick the abler one to be Emperor of Rigel,’_ Alm thought. And so Berkut went mad and sacrificed his love to Duma and Alm cut him to pieces for it, and Alm was now left trying not to injure _his_ love in a dance, five drinks into the evening. 

Alm was no dancer and neither was Celica. He held her right hand in his left, which put them backwards to start with, and reached the other down to her hip. His gangling stickbug body compelled him to stoop a bit so the arms could go their respective places. He wouldn’t have minded if Celica were a few inches taller. 

There was no time for dance classes and less for feasts in Alm’s first years since the coronation. The few years after that had no news good enough to warrant one, though the costs saved on food, liquor, and musicians were a sort of an upside. But as Rigel reached three years without civil war, barbarian invasion, or famine, and the Zofians sent a delegation of old friends to celebrate that they hadn’t started killing each other again, the dreadful business of a feast became inevitable. 

With a few hours’ crash course and now a firm buzz, Alm was out on the dance floor. He was meant to look Celica in the eye, to judge her intent and keep hazards and other dancers in sight, but her eyes were on his feet and his eyes on hers. He stepped on her toe by mistake, she punished with a light kick to the shin, and he countered by tripping and catching her, as their game started to get too fun, their giggles too loud. Their saving grace was that no man dared to dance better than the emperor, and most were tipsy at least; the whole floor was a mass of awkward doddering steps and starts and stops. 

The band’s tempo slowed into something softer, and the two of them found their stride. With fewer moves came less danger. Alm could look up. Celica was blushed, smiley and relaxed. He could be too. Without a stumble or kick they finished the song, stepping and swaying in time, their eyes on each other. Dancing wasn’t so bad, but as a quicker song came up, Alm gestured his head back to their seats. Celica nodded. 

  
  


**Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio!**

  
  


Celica nudged him his cup, so they had another drink, and Alm was starting to feel it. Before, he was a bit clumsy, cherpier than normal. He slammed down into his seat harder than he’d meant, choked a bit on vodka and bread, and took a minute to stare into space and catch his breath. Those sitting drank as well, someone clapped him hard on the back, and those dancing, the only guests exempt from drinking along, kept up their intoxicated shuffles. 

_‘Not much better with me off the floor,’_ it occurred to Alm. 

Alm sat back up, swinging back over to face forwards in his chair. Celica was on his left. leaned forward in her chair so as to get herself closer to her plate of tarts and cookies. It was not _hers_ , originally, being meant for the table, but Celica had claimed it when they returned, and was now finished half the plate. Alm snuck one off the side, a lemon-flavored one he found too sweet. 

Alm rested a hand on Celica’s shoulder and the back of her neck, sliding his thumb over her spine. She nudged a bit closer to him, but remained focused on the task at hand. Alm looked to try and spot Clive and Mathilda, when his eyes landed upon another. Her brother and sister-in-law likely gone to the dance floor, Clair was left behind at her seat, drinking. 

Quite heavily. 

For an already-small woman, who kept thin to avoid overburdening her pegasus, just keeping up with Alm and the rest of the feast would have been hard enough, even if she wasn’t drinking even more on her own. Alm didn’t know how much more she had drunk, but she finished another shot while he ate his lemon cake. Clair looked about, a wide gaze over the dance floor, her head tilting one way or another. She caught on something, and Alm looked to follow her view; Cliva and Mathilda were on the dance floor. Their movements were calm, swift, measured and matching to each other. 

Alm loved Clive, the man; decent, honorable, and upstanding. But Clive the knight was a coward. Not in a physical sense, in fearing death, but in fearing responsibility. He couldn’t handle reverses, had no killer instinct. As he aged, Alm realized how young they all were. Alm was reaching the age Clive was, when the two first met. He barely felt capable even with years of learning by doing, as quickly as he could. The idea of passing it all along to an untested teenager horrified him. To make that decision took the judgement of a halfwit, or a man who couldn’t bear another moment of it, and Clive was no fool. 

He was a knight of peacetime, who grew up in the sweet years of Zofia’s decline, not a real war in history. A decade more of that was no real preparation for the civil war. And Clive was lucky; they swept away Desaix’s army, conquered the Rigelians, and erased the Duma Faithful. The greatest glories won on the continent in decades, perhaps centuries. Alm loved the war.

He turned back to Clair to find her staring at him. She was smiling, her head turned sideways, resting on her arm, like she was trying to find an angle in which she couldn’t see Celica beside him. Alm blushed a bit and grinned back; Clair only smiled wider. He liked her; big words, interesting ideas about agriculture. 

It was an act, mostly. None of them thought they were going to win the war until Rudolf was dying at Alm’s feet, and so suddenly, they had won. And even if the won, what for? Mad and gods, a continent nearing anarchy, on the brink of famine? For Clair the comforting thing was to dig into the status quo and pretend everything was _exquisitely_ fine, and to talk about dresses and cheeses while they were all mud-covered and starving. 

Alm had thought about Clair. A bit before he and Celica had reunited; a lot after their meeting went down in flames. He could have had her, if he chose. That life would have been simpler, the marriage less turbulent. No screaming matches, no waking up in the night to find the bed empty and his wife sobbing in another room and refusing to say why. Clair wasn’t obsessed with the gods, didn’t have a father she despised but wouldn’t hear a negative word about, wouldn’t refuse to keep even a single bottle of wine in their apartments. 

But Alm rarely thought of Clair anymore. A decade since the gods breathed their last and Alm still wasn’t sure what he thought of the prophecy. But the only times in Alm’s life when he hadn’t felt half-empty, like he was missing something in his mind he couldn’t name, were when he had Celica by his side. They spent most of their waking hours together, much of that holding hands, so Alm’s brand could rest against Celica’s, where it felt right. They had never discussed or agreed upon it, but whenever practical their hands always found each other. In a way, it did more to make Alm believe there was something to the prophecy, than the supposed prophecy made him think they were meant to be together. Alm didn’t care much about what else he could have had, if not Celica. Clair was gesturing her head invitingly, over to the dance floor. A quicker song was coming on. She gestured again. 

_Some bridges have to be burnt._

Alm gave her a blank smile, and turned to Celica, who had cleared half her dish. 

“Let’s go dance, Celica,”

  
  


**Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio!**

  
  


The floor emptied as feasters trickled away, stumbling back to their tables. Their dance was a blur, filling the gaps between clear moments. At one point she was certain Alm stuck a leg out to trip a turtle-faced senator he hated; at another, in a slow dance, he leaned down and they held their foreheards together, swaying with wide, matching steps. With time things felt clearer. They hadn’t left the floor, she was certain, and it had been hours. The band had changed out, then changed back. More dancers drifted away, the night grew later, her and Alm’s movements came better into time. 

Part was the practice, having gotten more of a hang for not stepping on each other’s toes, or doing it for fun. But now as Celica and Alm moved around each other she realized, with a start, that her movements weren’t off anymore, no longer too drastic or too slow. The same went for Alm. Their moves were timed and matched - if unadventurous - and it seemed almost as if they knew what they were doing. The song came to a close, and they slowed, standing facing each other, no dazzling final moves, having danced themselves into sobriety. She wanted to go back to the tables for another drink or two or more, to turn it back. 

“Should we let them go?” Celica asked. 

Alm nodded, and they approached the band, who were dead-eyed, exhausted from the night’s performance. She felt a bit bad, having kept them up playing for just the two of them. Alm gave thanks - told them they could go rest, they played beautifully, he would love to have them again - all the other pleasantries he had such an instinct for.

Celica hadn’t been prepared for what the room would look like. She had known drinking to excess, as some show of fortitude, was expected, but in her childhood was always put to bed well before feasts reached its current stage. Dozens were sitting wearily, or lying on or beneath the tables, splayed across couches, or just on the floor. The only ones awake and present were the band, the cats scavenging the tables for food, and them. 

Celica’s sweat was soaked into her underclothes, along her sleeves and leggings, and after they stopped she could feel herself begin overheating. 

“Why don’t we get some air,” Alm suggested, just before she said it. Celica nodded and they headed for the balcony. 

He led her to the glass doors, held one open, and Celica stepped through, walking to the railing. A gust of wind greeted her as it opened, chilling with the autumn night’s cold. There was no rain or clouds, but the wind was frigid, in the way it only got on clear nights. The sky was bright and starry, the moon full, but at night there was little to see; the city had gone dark, fire lights banned an hour after sundown and only the palace and a handful of merchants in possession of the sort of magical, flameless lights that made the night dance possible. In the age of the gods there was no use for candles or torches, the things were so widespread - now they were an obscure novelty. Alm only still owned them because of the difficulty in finding a buyer. 

Celica had always wanted a glimpse of how Zofia and Rigel looked, in their grander days. The Rigelian capital was an odd study in contrasts - the pavement perfectly flat and unbroken, some buildings hundreds of feet tall, all inherited from the constructions under the lord Duma. Filling in between were shoddy brick and wood buildings of more recent make. A thousand years before and the city at night was still lit bright as day. Now Celica saw little more than the outlines of the larger buildings, the river, and some glimpse of the sad fields beyond, in the flatlands that characterized central Rigel. It was a lonely place for Duma to have picked as his seat. That much hadn’t changed. 

Alm stepped up by her, took her hand, then reached his arm over her head, wrapping her arm in front of her. He moved up close behind her, taking her other and holding it the same way, wrapping his arms around hers and holding her. 

“You’ll catch a cold,” he said, softly in her ear. 

“I haven’t, ever in my life,” Celica said.

“Neither have I.” 

They stood for a few minutes, Celica resting her back against Alm’s chest, his breath coming across her cheek. He must have had to crouch to get them level, but didn’t complain. When they married, Celica had thought they would have to spend hours catching up on every last detail, to know each other once more. But so many things they had never felt any need to discuss.

“When did you realize, Alm?” she asked.

“Realize what?” he asked.

“I think you know what I mean.”

“I didn’t know how cold it was out here until a minute ago, if that’s it.”

Celica could practically hear him grinning as he said it. 

“Hum,” she muttered, stifling a chuckle to not give him what he wanted. 

“That I’m not normal, and you aren’t either, you mean?” he asked, at last.

“Yes.”

Alm went quiet, took a few deep breaths, collecting thoughts. 

“Bit by bit, I guess. A flu went around the village the year after you left. Most of the kids got it, Tobin had two younger brothers die. I didn’t get even a running nose. But that’s nothing too odd. Just lucky. Then in the war, right at the start, I hit one of Desaix’s knights in the side of the head. Murderstroke, with the pommel, not the sort of thing that’s meant to kill anyone in a decent helmet. But it knocked her head right open. Then a few days later, I get a lance in the back from a charging knight, full speed and everything. Didn’t pierce my breastplate, of course, but should’ve broken my spine in two. I was walking again the next morning.” he said. 

“Things like that,” Celica agreed. “You could believe any one of them. But when you list them out, something seems wrong. 

“It was like that for you, too.”

Celica nodded. She wanted a drink, several. That was her inheritance. She wanted for Alm to push his hands under her dress, nibble on her throat, anything more. More vodka. Being drunk was easy and she missed it already, and when she was drinking because Alm was drinking she didn’t have to think about why she loved it so much. 

“It’s not easy,” Alm said. 

And it wasn’t, Celica knew. For either of them. Alm missed the war. When she got a few cups into him he’d tell her about it, the marching, the digging, the looting. But mostly the fighting, the killing. That the best time wasn’t actually when they were facing you, but when they ran; that’s when you rode through them, slashing down, sword-arm red with the blood of helpless men. It was a game. Better than chess or cards, because it was real, life and death, and there was nothing else like it. 

And Alm was ashamed of what he’d inherited, just like her. She didn’t like to think about what one of them would have been like without the other, but she felt like she knew. One would have ended up at the bottom of a bottle, the other at the bottom of a ditch. 

It wasn’t easy for either of them. Even with Alm holding her, always in reach. It was very, very hard.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I write Alm and Celica as dorks with a bunch of issues kicked under the rug, and here's the result. The ones featured here are not *exactly* canon, but I like the idea of them both inheriting some unsavory traits from their respective fathers and gods. 
> 
> This written exclusively between the hours of midnight and 2 AM, in exam season. Probability is high I come back to fix things later.


End file.
